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I've seen several kinds of them on Ebay.
In the second part of 20th century,
they were produced mostly in USSR and in Germany (by Freiberger).
Soviet ones had wooden box and there were two versions: one with Cyrillic inscription, another in Latin.
(I have the Latin version, made in 1968.)
The Freibergers had aluminum box, and I suppose inscriptions (stars names) were in Latin.
Only once, many years ago I've seen one made in England., in 19 century, or in the beginning
of 20. It looked exactly as the later Soviet one and was about 2 times more expensive.

Judging from Soviet manuals, they were standard equipment on ships.

It does the same job as the Star finder (with flat star map and transparent plates with circles)
which is more common (it is sold by Celestaire).

Another piece of Soviet standard equipment was a "3-armed protractor" made of bronze whose verniers
allowed to set the angles to 1'. (It allows to solve the problem of finding 
the position from 2 horizontal angles
between 3 objects on a shore). Again, this beautiful thing was produced in the West in 19th century,
while in Soviet union it was standard well into the 20th.

But the most exotic piece of equipment was the dipmeter. Which I've never seen on e-bay. 
In the Western literature I find only reports on experimental samples. It 
seems that this was never mass produced
in the West. Most standard Western manual do not mention this.
But in Soviet union, in the 1970s, this was also a standard equipment, and a Soviet manual
of that time strongly recommends to ALWAYS measure the dip with the dipmeter.
 
Alex. 
________________________________________
From: NavList@fer3.com [NavList@fer3.com] on behalf of Sean C [NoReply_SeanC@fer3.com]
Sent: Sunday, September 20, 2020 12:30 AM
To: eremenko@math.purdue.edu
Subject: [NavList] Re: Russian celestial star globe

Markku,

If you ever decide you don't want the globe, please let me know! I've wanted 
one of those for years - and I've never seen one that wasn't labeled in 
Cyrillic. I'd pay the going price plus shipping. But I'd also understand if 
you don't want to part with it.

Regards,

Sean C.

   

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